1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information device capable of displaying a plurality of windows on a screen, and to a method for displaying a plurality of windows on a screen.
2. Background Art
In recent years, information devices are widely used, which include a CPU (Central Processing Unit), a memory device for storing various programs, an input device such as a keyboard or a pointing device, and an image display device. These information devices have improved in their processing capabilities, allowing a plurality of programs to run concurrently. As a result, it is common to display the calculation results of programs in reduced-size windows (hereinafter, “reduced windows”) on the screen of the image display device.
The operability of such information devices has been improved as follows. For example, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. H10-198329 discloses a technique for maximizing a reduced window to fill the entire display screen or reducing the maximized window to the original size by allowing the user to specify a region of a window. The user can specify a region of the window, for example, by positioning the pointer of a pointing device such as a mouse within the region and by clicking the button of the pointing device.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2006-277648 discloses a technique in which when the user chooses to maximize one of a plurality of reduced windows on a display screen, the other reduced windows are minimized to a predetermined size, and the chosen window is enlarged to the region created by the minimization.
Maximizing one window to fill the entire display screen, however, causes operability problems such as that the other windows are hidden behind the maximized window or that it is impossible to open a new window.
The recent increase in size of image display devices has enabled the display of a larger number of reduced windows so as to improve the operability. At the same time, however, when one window is enlarged by minimizing the other windows, the minimized windows decrease their visibility, thus degrading the operability of the image display devices.